An interview with Abdulkarim Soroush By: Michel Hoebink Muhammad is the creator of the Koran. That is what well-known Iranian reformer Abdolkarim Soroush says in his book The Expansion of the Prophetic Experience that will be published early next year. With this view, Soroush goes further than some of the most radical Muslim reformers. In […]
By Michiel Leezenberg Michiel Leezenberg is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, and Sabbatical Fellow at ISIM. Just prior to Soroush’s departure from the Netherlands, Michiel Leezenberg talked with him about the philosophical origins and dimensions of modernity in the Islamic world. Soroush opened with some of his impressions of the […]
Paper presented at a conference on religion and modernity in Tehran Religious intellectualism is “the way” for religious intellectuals. It is a school of thought that strives to benefit from both human experience and Prophetic experience; and it does not sacrifice either one of these for the other. It believes that, in the modern age, […]
Secularism was supposed to have been capable of digesting religions; not to turn into a religion in its own right that banishes some other religions. Was this not the objection to religions after all? That an Islamic State, for example, does not treat Jews or Christians well, that it does not view them as equals, […]
(About the Cultural Revolution Again) The fact of the matter is that I still don’t know what the quarrel is about. Hasn’t it become clear yet that “the Cultural Revolution” was one thing and “the Cultural Revolution Institute” another thing? Has it still not become clear that Abdulkarim Soroush, Habibi, Bahonar, etc. played a […]
An interview with Abdulkarim Soroush By Matin Ghaffarian Q. In late May, you took part in a seminar on Islam and democracy. Who were the other participants and what were the issues discussed? A. In the seminar, four people were due to have engaged in a debate. Mr. Tariq Ramadan, Mr. Sadik Jalal Al-Azm, Mr. […]
An interview with Abdulkarim Soroush By Matin Ghaffarian Maybe this, too, is one of the problems of being famous. Among the many people who, wittingly or unwittingly, became involved in the cultural revolution 28 years ago, one was Dr. Soroush. But whenever the cultural revolution is mentioned, his name appears at the top of the […]
Istanbul May 9th, 2007 Every inch of the Mathnawi reveals that Jalal-al-Din Rumi, the ardent mystic, was deeply attached to the Qur’an. In the Mathnawi as a whole, there are more than two thousand instances in which the verses of the Qur’an have been cited or meanings and words derived from it. Perhaps only Abu-Hamid […]
Extracting general rulings from the heart of “absolute, a-historical reason” and considering them applicable to all people in all ages has become more difficult today. Humanity has now arrived at a healthy and beneficial pluralism and relativism, the fruit of which is modesty and the rejection of dogmatism – writes the great Iranian philosopher Abdolkarim […]
The Bush administration, despite President Bush’s vocal call for democracy in Iran, has failed to grant visas to several prominent Iranian pro-democracy activists. Among the Iranians still waiting for a U.S. visa is Abdolkarim Soroush, a philosopher who is widely regarded as the leading intellectual force behind the reformist movement that swept President Mohammed Khatami […]
